Action brought on 9 November 2023 – Federcasse and Others v Commission
(Case T-1070/23)
Language of the case: Italian
Parties
Applicants: Federazione Italiana delle Banche di Credito Cooperativo e Casse Rurali (Federcasse) (Rome, Italy) and 12 other applicants (represented by: A. Pera and F. Salerno, lawyers)
Defendant: European Commission
Form of order sought
The applicants claim that the Court should:
annul the decision of the Commission of 8 March 2023 (in response to the formal application made by the Minister for Economic Affairs and Finance, G. Giorgetti, on 15 December 2022) refusing to grant the approval necessary for the lowering of the target level of the budget in proportion to the amount of the covered deposits of the member banks of of the Fondo di Garanzia dei Depositanti del Credito Cooperativo, signed by the European Commissioner for Financial Services, M. McGuinness (Reference Ares (2023)1696845 – 8 March 2023).
order the Commission to pay the costs of the present proceedings.
Pleas in law and main arguments
In support of the action, the applicants rely on four pleas in law.
First plea, alleging breach of essential procedural requirements.
The decision consists of a letter and an annex. However, that annex is not dated or signed and contains no other indications of its origin. As a result, the decision, in so far as it is made up of an unauthenticated document the origin and date of which is uncertain, it is in breach of an essential procedural requirement for the purposes of Article 263 TFEU so as to render it amenable to annulment.
Second plea, alleging failure to give sufficient reasons.
The decision contains serious contradictions and omissions in so far as (i) the reasons given therein are scarce in part and contained in an external unauthenticated document in part, (ii) it does not set out why the Italian banking system should be regarded as a single entity, (iii) it does not set out why the criterion in Article 10(6)(b) of Directive 2014/49/EU 1 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on deposit guarantee schemes (‘the directive’), relating to the Fund, has not been met and (iv) it does not set out why the existence of the criterion in Article 10(6)(a) of the directive has been established in respect of the Italian banking sector as a whole. In addition, the decision is based on a methodology that is not public. As a result, the applicants are not in a position to follow the reasoning of the decision.
Third plea, alleging breach of the principle of good administration and infringement of the related obligation to examine carefully and impartially all the relevant evidence.
The decision did not examine any of the evidence submitted by the Italian authorities with the application, carrying out the analysis in relation to the Italian banking sector generally.
Fourth plea, alleging an error of law in the interpretation of Article 10(6) of the directive.
The provision laid down in Article 10(6)(b), read in the light of the other provisions of the directive, is based on an analysis at the level of the specific market/sector to which the credit institutions belong. In Italy, all the Fund’s member banks are, at the same time, part of a distinct sector which has mechanisms for covering risks, which separate them entirely from events which might impact other banks. Therefore, the Commission’s interpretation of the legislation at issue is incorrect, in so far as it completely fails to take account of the analysis by market/sector, fails to have regard to the fact that the Italian legislature intended to define a distinct sector for credit cooperative banks and, without any textual or systematic basis, assesses that the requirements laid down in Article 10(6) of the directive are fulfilled at Member State level.
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1 OJ 2014 L 173, p. 149.